For King and Country (36 page)

‘No, I won’t go yet. I’m starting in the laboratory tomorrow morning, and if I go to bed now I’ll be awake half the night. Where is he?’

‘I’ve given him some work to do. He’d better earn his keep while he’s here.’

Sally thought of Will’s damaged arm, and her eyes narrowed. ‘Where is he?’ she demanded.

Her expression sour, Miss Brewster said: ‘In the shrubbery, attending to the business. He’ll be there for a while. I’m going to church.’

Under the shrubbery would have been more accurate. Under the watchful eyes of the dogs Sally followed the path to the twin ‘compost bays’, hidden behind an ivy-clad
wooden screen and bounded at the back by the garden wall. One of the bays was clear of debris and a hinged wooden lid was propped against the wall, leaving the mouth of an old mine shaft gaping
wide and dangerous. Undaunted, Sally hitched up her skirts and clambered onto the ladder to start the long descent into an old bell pit, that sphere of light above her shrinking smaller and smaller
the further she went. Three quarters of the way down her heart began to race at the sudden thought that all Miss Brewster had to do was jam the lid on the shaft for long enough and she would be rid
of her unwelcome guests for good; nobody would ever find them here. She stopped, and clung onto the ladder until her panic subsided. Of course somebody would know. Ginny knew she’d stayed at
Miss Brewster’s, and she knew about the mine. She’d soon start asking questions Miss Brewster wouldn’t want to have to answer.

‘Sally? You silly lass! Go back up!’

‘No fear, not when I’ve risked my neck to get so far. I think this is the longest ladder I’ve ever seen. How deep do you think it is?’ Her eyes becoming accustomed to the
gloom, Sally continued her descent until she reached the bottom.

‘About two hundred and fifty feet, at a guess. Maybe three hundred. About that.’

‘Why, I might as well have a look at Miss Brewster’s secret, now I’ve come so far.’

‘Miss Brewster’s secret’s bloody dangerous, Sally man. Go back.’

Sally looked down into a large underground chamber and saw three large barrels, and some strange examples of the blacksmith’s art, with pipes and columns poking out of them at all angles.
Illuminated by a couple of miner’s lamps, Will was hunkered down beside a contraption that looked like a potbellied stove with a small open fire underneath it.

‘What’s in the tubs?’

‘Sugar water and brewer’s yeast, in three different stages of fermentation. She keeps it just warm enough down here for the yeast to work. One lot’s ready now, the next will be
ready next week, and the other the week after. She has it on the go all the time, Sally man. A few days after she’s distilled one lot, the next lot’s ready. She’s just left me to
siphon a load of it into this pot still, and then I’ll have to keep a watch on it, get the temperature up and then keep it right. She reckons it’ll take about three hours to run
through, and she’ll be back before it’s finished. Go back up, Sally man. Get out of the way, in case it all goes up in flames.’

Sally looked at the huge barrels. ‘Why, it hasn’t gone up so far, and she’s been doing it long enough. How on earth did she get them down here?’

‘I asked the same question, and she says she didn’t. Her father did, when he found the old bell pit, soon after they’d bought the house. Or maybes he knew about it before, and
that’s why he bought the place. She said he learned about distilling when he was soldiering in India. She’s not fond of me, though, Sally man. She’ll be chucking me out before
long, or telling the police to come and get us.’

Sally climbed down the last few rungs of the ladder. ‘She’s not fond of me either, any more,’ she said, ‘but I’ll be staying here as well, now I’ve finished
nursing. It’ll be handy for the hospital, and she won’t chuck us out, or tell the police.’

‘How will she not?’

‘We know about the still, don’t we?’

‘You mean . . . blackmail?’ He sounded incredulous. ‘I’d never have believed
you
. . .’

Sally shrugged. ‘Why, needs must when the devil drives, Will, and if you’re a hypocrite, you lay yourself wide open, don’t you? And she is a hypocrite, and not only with the
distilling either. She’s let you struggle down that ladder with your arm in plaster, and she’s left you down here with all this, and she’s put her sweet old lady hat on and gone
to church, the old sinner.’

‘Blackmail, though, Sal. That’s wicked.’

She answered him with another shrug. ‘Maybe, maybe not, but in for a penny, in for a pound. And that plaster’s going to be filthy before you get back to the surface. I’ve a
good mind to ask her for something for your labour an’ all, while I’m at it.’

‘I’m beginning to see an altogether different side to you.’

‘So am I.’

He gave a bark of a laugh, and the sound echoed from wall to wall, startling them both. He lowered his voice. ‘You’re dangerous,’ he said, ‘as dangerous as what’s
she’s doing down here. What comes out after this run will be about forty per cent alcohol, and it’s got to go through the still three more times before it’s ready. She reckons
it’ll be over ninety per cent at the finish. It’ll catch fire as easy as petrol, and I don’t want to be trapped down here if that happens. It’ll explode, with all the
alcohol fumes in the air. It’ll be like the time we were trapped in a trench when the Germans came with their bloody flamethrowers. I’ve seen men alight, screaming like banshees,
lighting up the night sky like torches. That’s what it’ll be like for anybody trapped down here if that goes up; you’ll end up like a bloody torch, man. It’s a miracle she
hasn’t gone up in flames before the day.’

There was an edge to his voice and she could see tiny droplets of sweat glistening on his top lip. The realization of his fear shocked her, but she wouldn’t – couldn’t –
say anything. He wiped his face with a handkerchief, and thrusting it back into his pocket, said, ‘She’s got guts, I’ll say that for her, and so have you.’

‘And so have you.’ She stressed the words.

‘A lot of people wouldn’t think so. She doesn’t. She despises me. I can feel it.’

Sally changed the subject, and nodded towards his left arm. ‘How’ve you managed?’

‘I’ve managed all right. It seems all right.’

‘Maybe if you can help her, she’ll come round.’

‘She’s never going to come round, no matter what I do. I’ll be glad to get out of it.’

‘Well, it cannot be helped, Will; this is the safest place, for now. We’ll go as soon as it’s safe to go. Till then, she’ll have to put up with us, whether she likes it,
or not.’

‘Have you seen my mother?’

‘No, I haven’t. She hasn’t been at work for a day or two, but don’t you go looking for her, or you’ll end up in clink, and that’ll be the finish of
her,’ Sally said, quite snappishly.

It wasn’t quite a lie, and it wasn’t the truth, either. Ginny had written to tell her the police had been to see Will’s mother, and she’d had a slight stroke. If his
mother got any worse, if she died, he’d hate her for keeping it from him. But if she did tell him, he’d be silly enough to go dashing away to Annsdale Colliery where he’d be
recognized, and probably arrested, and his mother wouldn’t want to be the cause of that. So she decided to leave it, give the police a chance to lose interest in their search, and hope that
with help from friends and neighbours his mother would rally.

‘I wonder what’s wrong,’ he said. ‘Will you go, Sal, and find out?’

‘I’ll go as soon as I can. It won’t be long. I’ll go on Saturday afternoon,’ she promised, and then looked pointedly at the still. ‘Well, she’s been
distilling for many a long year as far as I can make out, Will, and it hasn’t gone up yet, so she must have a pretty safe way of doing a dangerous thing. It just goes to show what shrivelled
old spinsters are capable of when they put their minds to it, doesn’t it?’

‘He’s not a very chatty soul, as a rule. He’s usually in a world of his own, lost in his work. Forgets everything else, doesn’t hear what you say to
him, doesn’t notice the cold. At times, he even forgets to go for his dinner. And if we have a lot of work on, he forgets to go home,’ the senior technician told her on Monday morning,
as he looked over her shoulder, watching her sowing culture media with the discharge from a wound. ‘Funny sort of gardening this, isn’t it? But it’s better than any allotment as
far as the prof’s concerned. Right, put that to one side and look at these, after a couple of days’ culture. Now there’s a healthy growth for you.’

Sally looked at the glass dish, the reddish culture medium almost covered with a growth of bacteria. ‘From a septic wound?’ she said. ‘I don’t think that’s very
healthy.’

The technician laughed. ‘I was talking about the bugs, not the bugger they’ve made their home in. We look at things a bit differently here. We’re more concerned with the
advancement of science than with the treatment of any particular patient, but it’s thanks to us that for the first time in history we’ve had a war that hasn’t killed more men from
infection than from their injuries. There’ll be no stopping laboratory work now. Away, and see them through the microscope.’

She peered down the microscope, and the clusters of tiny blobs she saw reminded her of frogspawn, or boiled tapioca.

‘It’ll be one of your jobs to prepare the plates with culture medium so that we can grow these beasts, and you’ll have to be careful not to contaminate them with your own
bacteria. Don’t worry; it’s no more difficult than mixing custard for your mother, but you’ve got to get it dead right. Once we’ve grown them, we can dye them. I’ll
show you how to spread films, and later maybe stain them. Gram staining helps to classify bacteria; some are Gram-positive, some Gram-negative. Look at these little darlings.’

Sally looked down the microscope at one slide after another, of bacteria with their beautiful purple stains, arranged like bunches of grapes, or in chains. She began to see the fascination with
‘this funny sort of gardening’. ‘Bonny, in away, aren’t they?’ she said.

‘There speaks the budding scientist,’ the technician grinned.

‘Bonny, but deadly,’ Sally breathed, and a picture of Dunkley and the Lowerys unaccountably popped into her head. ‘It’s amazing stuff, isn’t it, BIPP? To stop the
wounds going septic, I mean.’

‘And cleans them up if they are. Yes, it provides a very unhealthy environment for these little chaps, just the opposite to the culture medium. It kills them before they kill the patient,
but the BIPP nearly killed one or two of the patients when they first started using it, you know,’ he chuckled. ‘They never told you that, did they? Bismuth poisoning, from
over-generous use. They only put a smear on now, of course, and it seems to work just as well.’

She peered down the microscope again, glad of the little protection her white coat afforded, and wondered which of these ‘little darlings’ might be lurking under Will’s
dressing, and how many of them. The chief liked to leave wounds to heal under one dressing, if possible, but fractured limbs with inflamed, infected bone presented quite a challenge. Inflammation
destroys the bone, and where there’s dead bone there’s always sepsis, Dunkley had told her, and pieces of bone that won’t unite can be dying and coming away for a year.
Will’s arm would never mend until all that was shifted. Thank heaven it had been debrided and BIPP’ed just before he’d had to leave. She wouldn’t take the dressing off for
another month, unless he started complaining. Hope to God it would be all right by then.

He’d said it felt all right. What might happen if it wasn’t, she didn’t like to think.

The hallway of the administrative block was empty, except for Nurse Dunkley. Sally tried to escape, to slide out of the front door without a confrontation, but too late.
Dunkley was in front of her like lightning, blocking her exit.

‘Ah, Nurse Wilde!’ she challenged. ‘Oh no! It’s
Miss Wilde
now, isn’t it? Strange coincidence, though. The minute the lieutenant disappears, you move out
of the nurses’ home!’

‘Life’s full of coincidences, Nurse Dunkley.’

‘And some of them are too big to swallow, but you bat your shifty little eyelids at people and look at them as if butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth and tell them you’ve
nothing to do with him – and that’s just what they
do
do, they swallow it whole!’

This nasty bitch’s bonny blue eyes miss nothing, thought Sally, but her expression was impassive and her tone flat when she said, ‘Excuse me, I’ve got to go.’

Dunkley refused to move. ‘Still waters run deep. Dr Lowery’s right about you. The quiet ones are always the worst.’

‘Dr Lowery knows nothing about me.’

‘Dr Lowery knows everything about you, and so does his wife. You were with them long enough. But you’d better watch your step. I’ve got my spies and I’ll strip that
innocent mask off you before I’ve done, and then they’ll all see what your game is.’

‘I’ve got no game,’ Sally protested, doing her best to sidestep Dunkley, and failing.

‘Haven’t you? I’d say you’ve got two. Helping deserters, and helping yourself to my fiancé.’

Very coolly, very deliberately, Sally turned the thrust of the exchange away from deserters. ‘I didn’t realize you were engaged,’ she said. ‘Iain didn’t tell me
that.’

‘Iain!’ Dunkley jumped as if she’d been stung, and rasped, ‘You’ll forget Iain, if you know what’s good for you.’

‘I’ll
never
forget Iain,’ Sally countered, but the reaction was more than she anticipated.

Dunkley started towards her with such menace that she jumped, but too late; her hat was half off and Dunkley’s fingers were tangled in her hair. Sally put a hand around her wrist and
wrenching herself free ran through the massive front door of the entrance hall, out into the safety of a wet December night. She looked back and for an instant saw her adversary framed in the
doorway like malevolence made flesh.

A shudder ran down Sally’s spine. She shook herself, ruefully rubbed her scalp and straightened her hat, and after a moment or two put up her umbrella and took the road to Jesmond.

It was true, though. She would never forget Iain, or the change the sight of her distress had wrought in him. His protectiveness towards her during that horrible little scene in the anaesthetic
room, his shielding of her when Dunkley had threatened to report her to Matron, had left her stunned.